ere--What is War in itself and by itself? And what is its place in
the life-history of a State considered as an entity, an organic unity,
distinct from the unities which compose it? Is war a fixed or a
transient condition of the political life of man, and if permanent,
does its relation to the world-force admit of description and
definition?

If we were to adopt the method by which Aristotle endeavoured to arrive
at a correct conception of the nature of a State, and review the part
which war has played in world-history, and, disregarding the mechanical
enumeration of causes and effects, if we were to examine the motives,
impulses, or ideals embodied in the great conflicts of world-history,
the question whether war be a necessary evil, an infliction to which
humanity must resign itself, would be seen to emerge in another
shape--whether war be an evil at all; whether in the life-history of a
State it be not an attestation of the self-devotion of that State to
the supreme end of its being, even of its power of consecration to the
Highest Good?

Every great war known to history resolves itself ultimately into the
conflict of two ideals. The Cavalier fights in triumph or defeat in a
cause not less exalted than that of the Puritan, and Salamis acquires a
profounder significance when considered, not from the standpoint of
Athens and Themistocles merely, but from the camp of Xerxes, and the
ruins of the mighty designs of Cyrus and Hystaspes, an incident which
Aeschylus found tragic enough to form a theme for one of his loftiest
trilogies.[1] The wars against Pisa and Venice light with intermittent
gleams the else sordid annals of Genoa; and through the grandeur and
ferocity of a century of war Rome moves to world-empire, and Carthage
to a death which throws a lustre over her history, making its least
details memorable, investing its merchants with an interest beyond that
of princes, and bequeathing to mankind the names of Hamilcar and
Hannibal as a strong argument of man's greatness if all other records
were to perish. _Qui habet tenam habet bellum_ is but a half-truth.
No war was ever waged for material ends only. Territory is a trophy of
battle, but the origin of war is rooted in the character, the political
genius, the imagination of the race. One of the profoundest of modern
investigators in mediaeval history, Dr. Georg Waitz, insists on the
attachment of the Teutonic kindred to the soil, and on the measures by
whi